


Get Famous or Die Trying

by sharlatanka



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Elven Alienages, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 02:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16076336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharlatanka/pseuds/sharlatanka
Summary: Denerim Alienage native elf-blooded bard Perele always wanted more for her life. Fame, fortune, a way out of poverty and despair, a way out of her past, her genes, and a prescriptive future. What does one do? Head to Skyhold, where it’s all happening. Become the official bard of the Inquisitor, and then...?First in a series of chapters on this character, second in a series on non-Inquisitor companion characters (see What’s in a Name). Takes place in my Tevine Inquisitor Universe (see No One will Thank You, Whatever Happens).





	Get Famous or Die Trying

Perele raised her face from the washbasin and stared tiredly at her reflection in the mirror.  

 

Blue eyes, rosy cheeks (slightly less so then— it had been a long journey) and a knockout smile (quite literally), full of gold teeth in the places her real teeth had been knocked out.  The gold, stolen from a one pocket here, another there, until the alienage blacksmith could melt them into a tooth or four and keep a cut for himself. Half an ear, on either side, with both scars red from the sun.  She fixed her hair, springy blonde curls, and tied them up in ribbons. Let a few strands fall here and there— she remembered her old roommates used to say— it makes men think you’re innocent and fresh, but not too innocent to pay for a roll with. 

 

A fellow refugee woman from behind her cleared her throat.  Perele moved out of the way so that she could wash the journey away for herself. After all, Perele, who stood naturally quite tall over the hunched and humbled masses coming from Haven, the woods, and from wherever else, was no refugee. Although she didn’t look too different than the others in her ragged and dirty clothes. 

 

Perele came to Skyhold because it was the new center of Thedas. The place to be, if one wanted to be famous. To become someone else. To make a name for oneself. With her accordion in her bag where others probably held food, or their last memories of home they could take with them, Perele was sure she was about to become the most famous bard in Ferelden. If not Thedas, although she didn’t exactly know how big Thedas was. Once she was famous in Ferelden, she would figure it out. 

 

She stepped away from the crowd at the washing station and towards the beaten-up desk of the poor private tasked with registering arriving refugees. 

 

Flashing him a charming smile he didn’t reciprocate, he asked, “Name?”

 

* * *

 

_ “PERELE—!” _

 

She was young and fast. He ran with long strides, but had to balance his gut over them. There was no way he would catch her. 

 

Perele bounded over the familiar litter of Denerim’s alleyways clutching a privileged man’s purse of coins. The velvet of it felt hot and alive in her sweating fist; it was her first true steal.

 

Slim had been picking pockets in that same square— so why was he mad? 

 

“ _ PERELE!”  _

 

She looked back to laugh at his strained shouting. It was her undoing. Perele was a gangly young girl, skin and knocking bones with a curly mop of blonde hair which had a habit of getting into her eyes. She tripped on a broken barrel outside of The Gnawed Noble and her face came to a skidding halt on the cobblestones. 

 

Slim caught up. In a genius ploy that she didn’t at all plan, she raised her head and felt the pain of a front tooth knocked out on the pavement, she raised her bloodied head and cried; his face softened because of it, save for the occasional pain that showed on it from the strain of running. 

 

He sighed. “Come on,” Carefully, he lifted her up off of the ground by her skinned elbow, and they went into the tavern for a cold cloth and, after the berating, she hoped, a meal. 

 

Slim Couldry was her cousin. Or, that’s what they called each other. It was more than likely that they were the bastard children of the same human that decided to terrorize two unrelated elven women and leave them pregnant. They both bore few true elven features, and towered over others their age. Calling him her brother would just be a rather depressing acknowledgement of what their mothers were forced to endure and did not wish to remember. 

 

She was often envious of him. He was a popular man in and out of the alienage. It was much easier for someone who looked like a human to move in and out of the alienage without being questioned. He never had to slice his ears, the way hers had been. 

 

When she was not much younger— the scars were still fresh, at the age of about twelve— her mother was unsure if her genes would show in her ears. To keep the peace through social division, knowing that human men often took to the alienage for “recreation,” the Chantry sisters removed every half-elf child they could find from the alienage. If the tops of her ears turned out to be round, Perele would become a Chantry ward. 

 

For other little girls, childhood pain was piercing the earlobe. Perele stared herself down in a cloudy mirror, biting her lip to bleeding as her mother cut away the top halves of her ears with sewing shears.  At the time she was reminded that if she wanted to stay safe, she should avoid humans, avoid beauty, avoid attention. She should be a shadow. A ghost, her mother begged, so long as she could stay alive, and inviolate. Her mother sewed her wounds with shaking fingers, and put her daughter to bed. 

 

She rubbed those scars now, as Slim began his tirade in much the same words on the barstools of the inn.  _ Be invisible! Steal only what you need, only what will help another! You’re just a kid, do you want to be thrown in a dungeon for life?! Anka’s boy got that, and they forgot him down there! His name wasn’t even on the prison register! Perele? You want your name on every guard’s lips? You want them to follow you home? You want your mother to deal with this grief?! Huh? _

 

He dabbed the blood from her face as she winced while attempting to chew some burnt stew he had bought for her. She nodded, but she wasn’t actually listening. Her eyes were on the ease with which the noble and merchant ladies lounged in the tavern, lifting their elegant pearly wrists to their lips with ease, burdened as they were with jewels, and laughing, gossiping. 

 

“ _ Perele,” _ He noticed, and lightly flicked at her quickly bruising cheek. 

 

“Ow…!”

 

“We do what we can, stealing, to even the playing field between us and them.” He removed the coins she stole from the elegant velvet that she had loved the feel of so much, and dropped them into the dirty apron pocket on her dress. It was the only one she owned. “But we’ll never  _ be _ them. You have to understand that. This isn’t about getting rich. It’s about making sure you have a meal every day. Value what you have. Value your life.” 

 

It was clear on her face she wasn’t taking the argument well. “I have to settle some business.” He told her. “Stay here, and stay out of trouble.” 

 

“Hn.”

 

“What?”

 

“I said  _ okay!”  _ She pouted.

 

He laughed, and left to another private room. 

 

The tuning of a mandolin caught her ear, and she turned to look, having fallen into some despair thinking about all of the noble lady bracelets she would never wear. All of those noble ladies had their delicate necks turned towards one woman. 

 

The bard, spinning a tale on a mandolin with an enchanting voice. She caught and held the faxes of several male patrons over the course of a ballad, and gave a conspiratorial wink to Perele. The little girl felt her smile grow of its own accord. All the negative space between her teeth elicited a small chuckle from the bard. 

 

After she finished her songs, she collected her payment and her future appointment dates with the men she had enraptured. With nothing much else to do, she sat in front of Perele. She was everything the little half-blood wanted to be— beautiful, well off, independent, clever. And she had more than four whopping golden rings on each hand, more than Perele was able to count.

 

“What are you doing here alone?”

 

“I’m not alone,” she tried to put on the professional airs that slim did, and attempted to eat a sliver of bread nonchalantly. It still hurt. “My cousin is here. On business.” 

 

The bard leaned back in her chair with a light laugh. “Must be an upstanding fellow, this cousin of yours.” 

 

She shrugged and imitated the slouch. “He’s tall. So am I. It’s not a big deal.” 

 

“He give you a fat lip?”

 

Perele matched her attitude, tone for tone. “Did it to myself.”

 

“You look tough!” 

 

“I am!” She answered plainly. “Is it hard to do what you do?”

 

“Sometimes. Why? You think you might have a knack?”

 

“How much does it cost?” 

 

“That depends, too.”

 

“On what?” 

 

“The kinds of things you’d be willing to give up.” 

 

“Like what?”

 

The bard smoothed out her dress. “There are some things I can’t tell a little girl. But…” She noticed the bulging in Perele’s apron pocket. “For a few coins, I’ll tell you how to start.” 

 

She readily complied, not knowing exactly what “a few” meant. Half must have been enough. 

 

The bard counted them.

 

“What’s first, is that you have to come up with a new personality, a new name, something appealing— what’s your name?”

 

“Perele.”

 

“Hn… sounds like a housewife. That’s what your mother wants for you, yes?”

 

“I suppose.”

 

“Try more for something beautiful, enticing. Make your presence sound like the first wind of spring. Dress to match and everyone will be emptying their wallets. And…” she lightly touched the scars over Perele’s ears. “Do something about this.”

 

She deposited most of the coins back into Perele’s little palm, and closed her hand over it.Her hand felt as soft and warm and alive as the velvet purse. “I think I see something in you. That spark. You just might be a natural, my dear.” 

 

* * *

 

“ _ Name??”  _ He repeated exasperatedly. 

 

“It’s  _ Vesna.”  _ Perele declared with a voice like honey. Red came to the young guard’s cheeks. 

 

“...Occupation before evacuation?” 

 

“The greatest bard in Ferelden.”

 

“I don’t… know if I can write that.” 

 

“Well…” she smiled. “Just remember it, then.” 

 

She moved away from the desk once he had her information. She sat to open her travelling bag. From it she pulled out a small velvet purse, and opened that. From the velvet cake two filigreed golden half-moons. She placed each over one ear to complete her disguise, her transformation into  _ Vesna _ . After all, she wasn’t in the alienage anymore. She had a name to make for herself. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
